South India Dravidian parties outmaneuver other parties in Tamil Nadu!

South India Dravidian parties outmaneuver other parties in Tamil Nadu!
-Dr. Abdul Ruff
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Introduction

Recent state assembly election in Tamil Nadu has explicitly showed that the two main Dravidian parties one led by J. Jayalalithaa, and other by M. Karunanidhi have come to stay as the sole political expressions of Tamilians and there seems to be no way any other party, either regional or national- can replace them as the dominant or ruling party of the state
DMK is one of the two dominant political parties in Tamil Nadu. The other dominant political party is its offshoot, All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK). As of this writing (2015), either DMK or AIADMK has ruled the state since 1967.
Not only national parties, except Congress which congested as a major coalition partner of DMK, even important regional parties which took birth in Tamil state also failed to impress the masses that preferred on the ruing AIADMK and opposition DMK to be their representatives in the assembly and parliament.
The assembly outcomes have explicitly put a fact on national notice that no other party can form a government in the state for years to come, unless they themselves decide the spoil the mileage they have won so far in polls. Further, the Dravidian parties have also proven that no national or regional party can form government at the centre without aligning with either of these two wings.
Nowhere in India have two parties continued to dominate the regional politics as both the AIADMK and DMK have been in TN. AIADMK supermo Jayalalithaa led her party to a historic second consecutive win almost single handedly.

Annadurai floated DMK a political party to fight assembly and parliamentary polls and won the polls and formed the first non-Congress government Madras State and which he later renamed it as Tamil Nadu. Popular actor M. G. Ramachandran the then treasurer of the DMK formed his splinter party Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam in 1972 after a personal feud with the DMK chief M. Karunanidhi His AIADMK, as another Dravidian party, would take charge of the government after winning state elections in 1977.[ Since then either AIADMK or DMK formed the governments in Tamil Nadu.

Brief Dravidian history

Dravidian parties include an array of regional political parties in the state of Tamil Nadu, India which trace their origins and ideologies either directly or indirectly to the Dravidian movement of Periyar E. V. Ramasamy. The Dravidian parties have traditionally associated themselves with the Dravidian community and thus their primary goal was to achieve social equality and end the domination of North India on politics and economy of Tamil Nadu (a south Indian state).

Although most Dravidian parties are offshoots of Dravidar Kazhagam (DK),] there are a few other parties in Tamil Nadu that did not arise from DK directly. Nevertheless, both the former and the latter are considered as Dravidian parties because of the similarities of their ideals and goals. Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) and its political rival All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK) have been the major players of the Dravidian parties
Immediately after Indian independence, the Congress party was popular and thus was electorally very successful forming governments in most of the states including the Madras State.[8] But the popularity of the Congress government in Madras started to decline with its head Rajagopalachari proposing Hereditary Education Policy, which the opposition parties saw as an attempt to perpetuate the social hierarchy of the caste system. Congress gained back some ground when K. Kamaraj who was seen as a “man of the soil” took over. But his resignation to assume presidency of the All-India Congress Committee was detrimental to the state Congress since Kamaraj was much respected by the people, and even by political opponents of Congress including Periyar E. V. Ramasamy. Resignation of Kamaraj itself was a cause of deeply declining popularity of Congress all over India and especially in Madras State. Kamaraj sensed that DMK was rapidly gaining popularity in the state and coupled with his fear of fall of Congress-governments in several other states of India as well as the center instigated many other Congress leaders to relinquish cabinet positions.

Complacency ruined Congress party, more than corruption, less production and weak supply networkings and price rises. New rulers made money as new ruler, though not the proportion of today’s level. There were food shortage in several parts of the country and especially the state of Bihar was close to a famine. After Kamaraj’s resignation, the next Chief Minister of Madras State, Bhakthavatchalam, wasn’t able to inherit the charm of his predecessor. Persistent charges of ministerial corruption tarnished the image of the Congress. The food scarcity in the state was seen as an artificial scarcity, the mixed product of administrative bungling and private hoarding. The then scenario in Madras State, as observed by political analysts, was “frustration without coherence or direction, a revolutionary situation without revolutionists”

At one point even India’s first PM Jawaharlal Nehru would volunteer to resign as per Kamaraj Plan to strengthen the party, but soon to be advised not to, given the sensitivity of the issue. After Nehru’s death the Indian National Congress had weakened nationally. More than half of the population by then were less than the age of 35 and represented the post-Gandhian era. Nevertheless, the reasons for the resentment found within the Indian mass were more to do to the everyday life rather than just the political turmoil.

DMK made use of the negative effects of anti-Hindi mood of Tamils, caste system, food shortage, corruption to build up the cadres. The differences between North and South India, both as in languages as well as in social structure were compounded in Tamil Nadu through the feeling that the nation was dominated by the North and that the South had been both neglected and exploited. The antipathy towards the north developed as the animosity against Sanskrit as well as Brahmin as a proponent of Sanskrit; Brahminism was seen as the instrument of this “tyranny”. Ritually and socially superior to the non-Brahmin masses, a Brahmin commanded a dominant political and economic position in Tamil Nadu. With the rise of Dravidar Kazhagam and birth of DMK, along with the ascent of Kamaraj in the Congress, the Brahmin dominance was already on the process of being displaced in the Madras State. the politicians of the North looking at English as a foreign language that has usurped the rightful place of indigenous languages, whereas the South feared that English to be replaced by Hindi which is equally foreign to its tongues.

Anti-Hindi agitation

The major driving force of the Anti-Hindi agitation was the of future of Tamils in extra Hindi dominated North, seeking to impose Hindi on non0-Hindi states. An Official Language Commission appointed under the terms of the Constitution in 1955 to review the situation supported Hindi as the sole official language, although members from Bengal and Madras dissented in favour of English. Number of people with knowledge on English language was fairly evenly spread and also that imposition of Hindi would give a major advantage in terms of job and educational possibilities to those who have Hindi as their mother tongue. In effect a Tamil who would desire to pursue into union civil service would have to learn three languages, Tamil, Hindi and English, which are members of three different language families and each written in a different script. Therefore, a three-language formula proposed was seen as a great educational burden imposed on non-Hindi-speaking states.
Unlike South and East, where people wanted to learn English as international language north outrightly opposed three language formula as they wanted only one language formula everywhere with Hindi dominating every domain of administration. Nehru promised to India that Hindu won’t come in the way of other regions where it is not spoken. And in 1959he said that the interests of the non-Hindi speakers will be safeguarded and so did next PM Lal Bahadur Shastri later, but those promises didn’t put the fears of non-Hindi speakers to rest.

In the early 1960s DMK became a champion of the anti-Hindi cause that became popular among masses, controlled corporations of all the major towns in the Madras State. As the time clocked down to 26 January 1965, the threshold for the end of use of English as official language, neither Nehru’s promise nor the constitutional amendments of 1963 could calm the Tamil population, as it was obvious for them that moves to publicize Hindi as a language for Civil service examinations were underway by the central government. With the surging fears haunting the people of Madras, Congress party of the state would do nothing bigger than a small demonstration and insist the people that there was no ground for alarm. In contrast, DMK held an Anti-Hindi Conference in Tiruchirappalli on 17 January 1965. The conference was supported by all major opposition parties and funded by major wealthy industrialists – the industrialists who themselves feared of losing into influence of the North if Hindi be made the official language. The conference decided to hold the 26 January (the fifteen anniversary of India’s republic day) as a Day of Mourning.
The Anti Hindi agitation and the popularity gained through it aided DMK to a great extent to win the 1967 general elections under a broad coalition of several likeminded parties, including Communist party and Muslim League. .

Growth of DMK

It can be noted that the DMK was one of the two parties (the other being the Muslim League) to win all the seats it contested in the national elections, winning 25 of 25 (the Muslim League won 3 of 3) and emerged as the third major opposition party in the Indian Parliament. Kamaraj, who was the President of the Congress party then, himself lost to a little known “student leader” in his home constituency. The DMK had garnered more than 6 million votes in the state assembly winning 138 out of 173 seats it contested.[11] The electoral victory in 1967 is also attributed to an electoral fusion among the non-Congress parties to avoid a split in the Opposition votes. Rajagopalachari, a former senior leader of the Congress party, had by then left the Congress and launched the right-wing Swatantra Party. He played a vital role in bringing about the electoral fusion among the opposition parties to align themselves against the Congress.

Annadurai, who by now was trying hard to erase his party’s secessionist image, proclaimed that the official slogan of the agitation will be “Down with Hindi; Long live the Republic” – in Tamil – “Hindi Ozhiga; Kudiyarasu Vāzhga”. With the tensions tightening in the South, some Northern states, such as Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh organized anti-English riots involving, violence and lawlessness against government properties. Thus as the North-South divide further deepened, the stage was set for conflict between the Congress-led government and the opposition parties, but the scale and development of the conflict were expected by none
Dravidian parties rose to power and prominence in the political stage of Tamil Nadu, a state in India, in the 1960s. The rise in power and political support was gradual until Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK), a Dravidian party, formed the government in the state in 1967. Although after the 1970s the Dravidian parties met with many break-aways and have taken rival stances against each other, the seat of power in Tamil Nadu has been with one or other Dravidian party. The increase in popularity of the Dravidian parties in the 1960s is attributed to several factors including the fall of popularity of the Congress Government in the centre and the North-South disparity as claimed by the Dravidian politics. The series of events climaxed with an anti Hindi agitation which led to the downfall of popularity of the then Indian National Congress government in the state and eventual rise of Dravidian parties to power.
DMK championed the cause of independent Tamil Nadu (or, if possible, independent Dravida Nadu comprising the four southern states of India) starting from its inception in 1949. But this politics has changed over years as it defeated the Congress party and began ruling the state. Its parent party Dravidar Kazhagam (DK) from its inception in 1944. The first call for Tamil Nadu independence seems to have been made by the Tamil Nation Liberation Association (Tamil Desa Viduthalai Sangam) in August 1938 [Reference 1].The DMK Central Committee (Maththiya Seyarkuzu) voted to drop the independence demand on November 3, 1963, after the Indian Parliament passed the Sixteenth Amendment to the Indian Constitution; the amendment prohibited those who advocate separatism from running for public offices (such as Indian parliament and state legislative assembly). It would seem that the abandonment of the independence platform was not from the heart but a tactical move, at least on the part of Karunanidhi who was a senior DMK leader at that time.

Until now, for us, the people of Tamil Nadu, elections have only meant two political outfits and their respective symbols, the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (rising sun) and All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (two leaves). To be more precise, they have meant two parties and three personalities – say M Karunanidhi, MG Ramachandran and J Jayalalithaa. These three have trapped and controlled the political imagination of the people. For an electorate that led the way in social reform, we have lost almost all our social awareness and reduced politics to hero-worship and sycophancy.

The recent poll was an unusual as for the first time Tamil Nadu had multi-cornered fight with a new alliance emerging under Vaiko in the shape of the Front created by the Left, Vaiko’s party, a couple of major Dalit formations and one led by a cine star banding together. This alliance was expected, technically, to spoil AIADMK’s and DMK’s calculations and significantly democratize political power in the state. But that never happen as people preferred AIAADMK and DMK to fill the assembly seats.

Tamil Nadu’s hero-worship, especially the display of unabashed mother-worship that Jayalalithaa receives from her followers, has made the country look at the state with surprise. Analysts related Tamil Nadu’s electoral behavior to caste-based politics, “freebie culture” and pre-election bribery that has become the norm in the state. They also implied that the Tamil people in general are gullible illiterates who have been taken for a ride by the Dravidian parties for a very long time. But the Tamil people gave a measured response in support of Dravidian leadership.

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At the base of popular choices lies an essential cultural fact: linguistically and racially, Tamils, maybe South Indians, see themselves as different from the rest of the country. Tamil one of the oldest languages of India, is so different from most Indian languages that the people of Tamil Nadu do feel different, special – and isolated. Tamils don’t look like most people of India and the texture of their habits, rituals and celebrations are entirely Tamil.
How much ever historians and anthropologists may argue the validity of the Aryan-Dravidian divide, under the skin and in the mind of every Tamilian the division exists and attitude of Norte toward South and Tamils make division marked.
It is this socio-cultural reality that brought to the fore the Dravidian movement, and this is one of the reasons the Dravidian parties have taken over politics in Tamil Nadu. In spite of the emergence of so many other Dravidian parties, DMK and AIADMK even today own the Tamil card. Tamils trust them. May be it is their political lineage that gives them this strangle hold! But that is a fact

Jaya’s charisma and mass appeal

Whether we like it or not this distinction also plays a role in the voting pattern of the upper-castes vis-à-vis the others. But this is not crystal clear, since at times convergence takes place due to some complex reasons. Take for instance Jayalalithaa. Many forward castes prefer to vote for her and her party has a role to play in this choice, not to forget that she is not seen as anti-Brahminical as M Karunanidhi had been. But she also has a huge support base among other caste groups. Firstly she is MGR’s heir and therefore the strong Dravida connection is confirmed even if she is upper-caste. Here political identity takes precedence over the individual.. The connection between beauty, honesty, success, trust and whiteness affects all of us. Though she is under the shadow of a big corruption scandal, people like her as others are not seen as being better than Jayalalithaa. Added to this is the perception of motherhood making distrust almost impossible. Here, the “mother” culture is very strong in Tamil-land.

On the other hand, Karunanidhi and team challenge this perception and try their very best to further establish themselves as the real Dravidian representatives. In fact the worship of Jayalalithaa is played up subtly as an example for Dravidian subjugation. Whenever the DMK consolidation occurs the balance tilts in its favour. But it is obvious from the recent political statements of Karunanidhi’s son M Stalin, that there is a clear shift, even disowning of many of their core principles. The need to appear aspirationally upper caste/class has influenced their move towards embracing a more business-like and less atheistic approach. Muddled in this is once again the “white” that appears not just in skin but symbolically as upper class power.

One wonders as to wonder why no other outfit has been able to challenge the DMK and AIADMK. To the credit of both these parties, they have over the years established an electoral base that cuts across caste lines. Though their choice of candidates is still caste-influenced, the parties themselves have a support base that is wider. This cannot be said of most other parties like Pattali Makkal Katchi or Viduthalai Chiruthaigal Katchi. This has reduced their role to being second-class partners. The Congress and Bharatiya Janata Party are national parties have in their ranks very Tamil leaders, yet they will never be considered Dravidian. The strength of their party identity makes it very difficult for their leaders to convince voters that they are truly Tamilian. The Congress and BJP are, let us admit it, seen as parties of Hindi-speaking Northerners. Tamils do not much like them.

Cinema influences politics

The umbilical link between Tamil politics and cinema is so deep-rooted that even new voters have imbibed this tradition subliminally carrying it forward to the next generation of film stars.
DMK leaders were rooted in Tamil movies in several domains like script writers, comedians, actors, play back singers, etc. This led to a change in the caste-class participation in cinema influencing everything from acting to the music that captured the hearts of millions. It is here that CN Annadurai, M Karunanidhi and MG Ramachandran created an identity for themselves.
Tamil Nadu is the first ever state n the world to produce a film star chief minister by electing an actor turned politician MGR as their CM. Late, American actor Ronald Reagan became the US president. Tamil Nadu has had chief ministers from the cine-world for the past 50 years. We have to understand this historically, without reducing this to “film-madness”.
Tamil cinema and literature were very important tools in influencing people and accelerating the Dravidian movement. The stories that were told via Tamil films were part of the Dravidian philosophy and consequently changed peoples thinking. The novels or short stories that were adapted, the screenplay, song-lyrics were drenched in the Dravida philosophy.
The direct connection between cinema and Tamil Nadu’s socio-politics continued right up to the 1980s. Even though it has moved away in the last few decades, in the psyche of the Tamilian this bond has not been broken. When a cinemagoer watches a film, he/she is unconsciously connecting the political and cultural, film personalities with the power of change.

Economic gains

DMK and AIADMK promoted the freebie culture in the state to woo the voters. Are people so naïve that they vote based on the gifts they receive from the establishment? This is , the system establishes a giver-taker power syndrome and the gift confirms benevolence as a virtue. On the other side of the scale, the receiver is thankful for the kindness shown by the rulers. The politicians distribute the gifts to voters as the frenzy surrounds the events.
One comprehends how political outfits cultivate an environment of competition among those who are beneficiaries, always keeping them in check and consciously positioning themselves as kings and queens. This is only an extension of the landowner-laborer syndrome in official terms.
The pre-election money distribution is unfortunately seen only as another gift. The AIADMK and the DMK are masters at this craft. But I am not going to straightjacket citizens that easily. Existing within this bamboozled environment, voters also figure a way to exercise some pressure and pit one gift against another. Yet, they remain within the established condition.
Tamil Nadu has been a dictatorial democracy for far too long. Is Tamil Nadu safe under these Dravidian giants? Recent killing of a girl Swathi at a railway station in Chennai raises the question of safety for women, children and even others in the state. Whether it is the DMK or the AIADMK in power, in matters of freedom and citizens rights, they are not very different. Both cannot control corruption.

Many citizens are mortally afraid of taking them on, scared that “licensed gondaas will physically harm us. The cadres of both these parties abuse their strength with great regularity and no police force will come to common man’s aid.
One gets the impression that mafias decide the course of the society in the state.
Will these elections change anything?

Observation
The assembly poll 2016 led to the weakening of all non-Dravidian parties. Vaiko originally a Dravidian leader floated his own party and made a electoral coalition with other 5parties to float front but none of candidates of the coalition won a seat to the assembly.
PMK, of Dr. Ramadoss lost its representatives in the new assembly as not even his son Anbumani could win his “safe” seat from his home constituency with his caste dominating politics.
The worst predicament was that of Hindutva forces with a big agenda to saffronize the nation and crate tensions across the nation. Worst sufferer in the poll is the Hindutva BJP which for years carved out a strong vote bank in the state by very cleverly using unconstitutional hatred for Muslims as the key campaign strategy. Later as the party was gaining acceptance in some towns, it bargained seats with DMK or AIADMK for seat agreements and it had and own seats in the Assembly and parliament. However, this time around BJP could not maneuver either with DMK or AIADMK- both outrightly rejected the BJP for electoral alliance. BJP always claimed it made the DMK and AIADMK win elections and without it both will fail miserably. BJP was defeated as it could not win even one seat in the assembly- the first time in years.
Now BJP has a parliamentary seat from Nagercoil (Kanyakumari) which it had won through an electoral alliance with the AIADMK and the MP is now a central minister in Modi cabinet. The problem is the party has lost all 6 assembly segments in the assembly polls and it is likely to lose the parliamentary seat as well when the national poll takes place. The party is now facing an existential threat in the state and so the Modi led BJP government wants to save the Nagercoil seat and has announced a sea port to be built in Colachal and concerned minister is to enthusiastic about the port project in some way. But Kerala government has objected to it as its own sea port in Vizhinjam near capital Thiruvanathapuram, about 40 KM from Colachal has already been sanctioned by the previous Congress-UPA government led by Manamohan Singh the Colachal port can cause losses to Vizhinjam port. Now Kerala is ruled by Left parties while the port project was of the then Congress led UDF government.

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In spite of the rampant corruption, the state has moved forward albeit slowly. Crucially reservations have been largely a success story, providing opportunity to so many, though unemployment keeps growing. These have also kept voters at large, within the DMK/AIADMK ambit. Other parties have no such records to show to the state voters. Tamil Nadu has never really been at the nadir of economic development; in other words Tamil Nadu has not been a Bihar or UP. True, the statistics keeps changing.

While the DMK forged an alliance with Congress party, the ruling AIADMK did not try to make any alliance with any party (a couple minor parties she gave seats to contest) and won the assembly for the second consecutive time. Selvi Jaya proved that she was unnecessarily over confident about her party coming back to power. But she is right: people love her.
Tamils love the major Dravidian parties but more AIADMK than DMK.
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Major Dravidian parties in Tamilnadu are as follows:
AIADMK – All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (M. G. Ramachandran, Janaki Ramachandran, Jayalalithaa Jayaram) [Split from DMK]
DK – Dravidar Kazhagam (Periyar E. V. Ramaswamy Naicker, Veeramani) [Original Dravidian party]
DMDK – Desiya Murpokku Dravida Kazhagam (Vijayakanth) [Not born out of any other Dravidian party]
DMK – Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (C. N. Annadurai, Muthuvel Karunanidhi) [Split from DK]
MDMK – Marumalarchi Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (V. Gopalaswamy – Vaiko) [Split from DMK]
PDK – Periyar Dravidar Kazhagam [Split from DK]
PMK – Pattali Makkal Katchi (Ramadoss) [Not born out of any other Dravidian party]

Mideast: Israel with US backing prolongs conflict with Palestine as state policy!

Mideast: Israel with US backing prolongs conflict with Palestine as state policy!
-Dr. Abdul Ruff

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Yes, today, world politics and tensions are attributed to two fascist nations – USA and Israel, the world’s leading merchants of terror goods to keep the world tensed and humanity terrorized.

Both jointly dictate its colonialist terms to the world.

Actions of both are detrimental to world peace, work again peaceful existence of humanity and the cause of existential problem for the besieged Palestinians whose lands they have misappropriated by misusing the backboneless UN.

World is used as a pawn because, the USA-Israel terror twins (along with UK) jointly make and break international laws in English.

Both literally control global opinion as they have purchased certain rights of global media outlets to serve the imperialist and colonialist causes. In fact, many non-core media lords also make money this way.

So, fearing their potentials for destroying the entire universe, most countries are rallying behind the fascist terror schemes of USA and Israel.

That is indeed worrisome.

State terrorism and expansionism

At times, one gets the impression that the Mideast crisis with regard to the establishment of Palestine would be solved any time soon because of involvement of US super power but very soon Israel-USA terror twins demolish that impression with fresh anti-Palestine ideas and renewed terror attacks. Regular Zionist aggression, duly backed by USA, has been the scene of Mideast for years now.

That is the reason why Israel continues to occupy and commit genocides while Palestinians, besieged by Israel-Egypt terror twins, continue to suffer- no credible is in sight mainly because of US mischief as the chief mediator in Israel sponsored fake peace talks.

For Israel ambiguity cum pretension suits its very existence in Mideast as the only aggressor.

One is not very sure if Israel follows USA or vice verse or both ways. But one gets the impression that USA follows its fascist “master” in advancing its energy goal in West Asia.

By mutual collaboration in warfare and intelligence, USA as well as Israel advances similar fanatically imperialist policies abroad: while Washington pursues its permanent war agenda in energy rich Arab world by sustaining its terror troops in all invaded Muslim nations following the Sept-11 hoax, starting from Afghanistan, Israel keeps attacking Palestine in order to build more illegal colonies for exclusive criminal Jews arrived from overseas as part of its expansionism cum genocides policy.

State terrorism and expansionism through illegal settlements in Palestine have been the hallmark of Israeli Zionist foreign policy being pursued for decades ever since it was imposed in Mideast by USA-UK terror twins just after the World War –II which the USA led Axis won. USA, UK and other NATO imperialist war allies supported Israeli occupation of Palestine and shielded all its crimes against humanity.

Naturally, then, colonialism joins its boss imperialism as Israel and India collaborate with USA in terror wars on Islam.

No matter who is made the PM in Israel after a formal poll, manipulated by the Mossad, Israel continues to be oppressive criminal regime in West Asia. Whether Hillary or Trump assumes power at the white House, that would not matter to the world as USA would pursue the fascist policy to advance capitalist agenda globally. But Hillary could be more dangerous to the humanity than Trump as she has already declared to promote Zionist criminal regime in Mideast, whereas Trump has reasoned to review the bilateral ties with fanatic Israel and make US policy neutral on Palestine – major shift in US foreign policy.

Middle East Quartet aids Israeli occupational policy

USA-UK twins led Western powers and a criminal minded Blair led Quartet have deliberately promoted Zionist expansionist crimes inside Palestine. However, the recent report by the Middle East Quartet bluntly criticized Israel’s systematic settlement expansion and large land takeovers in Area C, targeted at preventing a two-state solution. The Quartet report was met with considerable disappointment at the highest levels of the Palestinian Authority, and also a sigh of relief in Israel.

The Palestinians expected the report to specifically highlight the 2002 Arab Peace Initiative as the main basis for negotiations leading to a state along the 1967 lines with East Jerusalem as its capital. They had hoped that similarly to the June 3 Paris summit declaration, the Quartet report includes terms of reference for the permanent status negotiations.

The Quartet report seems to have missed its original target of producing a path of hope for the pragmatists on both sides. Though highly criticized by the Quartet, the Israeli government is satisfied with the report as Netanyahu sees the report as a non-binding declaration – a useless exercise in emptiness.

The Zionist hawkish PM Netanyahu had asked US foreign minister Kerry in their Rome meeting June 27 to refrain from making reference to the 1967 lines, because Israel is keen not to solve the issue by Arab Peace plan of 2002.

Recently, as usual, in order to expand the illegal settlements, the Israeli Cabinet nodded approval for the building of another hundreds of new housing units in the Jerusalem area, making the world get puzzled over the real intentions of Israel and USA and the logic of of the so-called peace talks, mediated by the “democratic” superpower.

Officially Palestine is now clearly on its way to get full member of UN and become a soverign nation with independent polices to defend itself from external aggression. Naturally Israel is deeply worried as USA now stands isolated along with Israel. However, as suppliers of terror goods to third world, both continue to be the merchants of death globally and dream of somehow squandering the peace move.

Pressed hard by the feeling of being chased by Israeli military, police and Mossad agents, Palestinians have, upon huge sacrifices, obtained defacto statehood as the first step towards an independent nation. PLO in Ramallah of West bank in West Bank asked the EU and the USA for a binding timeline for negotiations, followed by a Security Council resolution.

USA supports like an unmoving unreasonable stone. A senior Palestine Liberation Organization official close to President Mahmoud Abbas said that Abbas is severely critical of US Secretary of State John Kerry for pressuring the EU not to make the Quartet report a policy platform for future negotiations. The official assessed that the USA will publish guidelines for future negotiations as a platform for the next administration, possibly via a presidential policy speech. He also expressed concern that the US policy statement will allude to the need to recognize Israel as a Jewish state.

USA and Israel continue to push PLO (PA) to support the Zionist cause and obstruct the creation of much delayed Palestine state through proper legal UN route. Meanwhile, according to sources, Ramallah is committed to working with Egypt and France on a binding UN Security Council resolution on Palestinian statehood referring in detail to settlement expansion, the 1967 lines, East Jerusalem and a two-year timeline. As the official put it, “For us the Quartet report is a non-paper; our sole basis is the Arab Peace Initiative.”

The US led Quartet, though not serious about a genuine settlement of the Mideast conflict, presented unprecedented work, outlining the obstacles to a two-state solution in great detail. The most striking “finding” is the enlarged strength the Zionist criminal regime achieved though fighting the Hamas government and presenting it as a terrorist organization, instead of an elected government, and as a result the gradual de facto annexation of much of Area C – which makes up 61% of the West Bank – by Israel.

The outcome, though, is that the Palestinians are left without any hope for an internationally monitored two-state solution process, and their despair could lead to more violence or a new intifada. US diplomatic sources in Tel Aviv affirmed that Kerry convinced the EU to refrain from setting a new basis for future negotiations. There is no USA-EU consensus on many of the permanent status issues, as the US government traditionally tilts more toward Israel.

As before, Israel is never warned strongly by Quartet, USA and EU to force it to halt illegal settlement construction inside Palestine and, with the backing of US veto, does not have to pay for its occupation policies. This makes Israel embolden with its crimes against humanity. Israel is eagerly awaiting the “usual” Turkish support for the Zionist occupational genocides in Palestine.

How the occupation works for Israel?

True, Islam has more enemies than friends on the earth, including some Muslim rulers. It is therefore, difficult to assert who loves Islam and who hates.

The US position on this, cutting across the bipartisan politics, is very clear and remains the same as both Republican and Democratic parties promote Zionist criminal state and shield its crimes against humanity.

The EU’s premise is that Europe will have to act independently now because of the US presidential transition. This road map could include several stages, beginning with fresh-talking to the “parties” about curbing Israeli settlement expansion and Palestinian incitement to violence, together with economic confidence-building measures in Area C for the Palestinian agricultural sector. Thereafter, Brussels, in coordination with the French, may start preparing for a possible international peace conference with the parties before the end of 2016.

Though Ramallah and Jerusalem have both made their positions clear to the Quartet, the USA, the EU have not lost hope, nor has it retracted its commitment to continuing the path toward a policy platform for a two-state solution and an international conference before the end of 2016. But the 2016 ended without any positive result.

No one can try and unilaterally predetermine the outcome of a final status agreement. That’s to be done at final status. US President, speaking for Israel, did say that at the time of final status, it will be necessary to take into account new realities on the ground that have changed since 1967, but under no circumstances should those realities be—should anyone try and do that in a preemptive or predetermined way, because these are issues for negotiation at final status.

Not even once the “democracy leaders” and “human right protectors” in USA have found time even to criticize the Zionist state crimes in Palestine, let alone undertaking measures to punish the Jewish criminals.

No amount of preventive repression or collective punishment of Palestinians will bring an end to the bloodletting in Tel Aviv or elsewhere. As long as this oppressive system stands, and the United States continues to support it with billions of dollars a year in military aid, despair will spread, and with it death.

Israel, the western agent for selling their terror goods for third world, remains the arrogant colonialist. It has assumed the support of NATO terror gang as well.

US elections have “legitimately’ postponed the Palestine issue and the Palestinians and humanity at large have wait for the “outcomes” of presidency poll as if the new president would be kind to Palestine cause and force Israel to remove all terror blockades and occupational terror gangs from Palestine.

French initiative

Israel behaves a cunning monster and, with US backing, controls the course in West Asia, fueling crisis in the region so that it can continue its terrorist operations of expansionism and genocides.

The UNSC and USA should be able to control Israeli polices towards Palestine and Mideast. Israeli ability to control and manipulate the peace talks needs to be contained effectively in order to produce results on the Palestine issue and Mideast, rather West Asian peace. .

The French initiative also has not yet taken off owing to US-Israeli pressure tactics. However, the move may have some impact on the Quartet report. A senior official close to EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Federica Mogherini told Al-Monitor that in the aftermath of endorsing the French initiative and the publication of the Quartet report, EU officials are preparing a tentative road map for progress in the diplomatic process.

Israeli rejection, Palestinian political weakness and US passivity alarm Brussels, increasing its fear of violent escalation in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. And so, despite negative reactions by both sides, Europe is stepping into the current policy vacuum. At the moment, it’s the only show in town.

Fearing Israeli military assault any time on them, Palestinians don’t even breathe properly. As it controls the Palestine territories Israel has been able to easily incite violence in Palestine and encourage fights with Jews so that Israeli military and m police people can target the Palestinians, especially those who are their target. . Israel’s government, now the most right-wing in the country’s history under ultra hawkish Netanyahu, quickly “responds” with terror measures to murder the Palestinians, including children, that the UN promptly warns might count as collective punishment: flooding the West Bank with troops, sealing off the West Bank and Gaza, and revoking entry permits that had allowed 83,000 Palestinians to cross into Israel for work, worship and medical care.

And much more!

What does Israeli occupation of Palestine really mean?

What does Israeli occupation of Palestine really mean?

-Dr. Abdul Ruff

_______

Palestinians feel being chased by Jewish government and its military cum police all the time. Persecution, aggression, oppression of Israel in Palestine where its military and police have a free ride all the time. USA, Europe and their UNSC help Israel terrorize Palestinians all the time.

Israeli occupation of Palestine means annexations, destruction genocides, midnight knocks at house doors, insane torture worse than beheading, military-police chasing of Palestinian youth and children, and fear among Palestinian community living even abroad as Zionist Mossad with CIA backing can murder any Palestinians anywhere in the world. CIA guys make the so-called suspected terrorists remove their cloths and use the worst kind to torture methods on their bodies, worse than even murdering them. Chopping of finders, hands, legs, other body parts have become very ordinary technique of these imperialist capitalists.

Since America and Europeans claim to be democracies they think they have the right to torture any Muslim anywhere in the world. Israel also does it because it a terror allies of NATO/USA.

Unlike American occupation forces s in Islamic countries or Hindu/India terror forces in Kashmir, Jewish military keeps expanding the illegal borders by annexing more and more lands each time after its genocides of Palestinians.

The Hindu forces in Kashmir keep building houses and offices for military purposes. JK government disallows anybody from purchasing lands in Kashmir which disables Indian desire to make Hindutva inroads by making Hindus settle down in Kashmir. However, Indian regime and its military keep trying all tricks to break the law.

Zionist crimes in Gaza

Let us consider the Jewish attacks most recently on Gaza strip on July 28. Israeli navy attack fishermen in Gaza damaging their boats, meanwhile Israeli troops invade West Bank communities and injure three youth. The Pentagon has already offered its blanket approval of all Zionist crimes inside Palestine as such terror operations reduce Islamic population worldwide – a major goal of US led NATO terror wars in Islamic world.

Israeli navy ships attacked, on Thursday morning, several Palestinian fishing boats in the Sudaniyya Sea area, northwest of Gaza city, kidnapped seven fishermen and confiscated their boats. A fisherman told local news sources that the Israeli military forces first surrounded them all of a sudden giving a deadly shock to them and the navy boats attacked them from several directions, and fired many rounds of live ammunition, causing damage. The navy illegally confiscated the boats before moving them to the Ashdod Port.

On July 27 also the Israeli navy attacked Palestinian fishing boats, close to the Gaza shore, and kidnapped two fishers. Some of the boats were hit with live rounds, before the Jewish terroirsts in uniform (soldiers) assaulted them. Elsewhere, three Palestinian youth were injured; four others kidnapped when Israeli soldiers invaded Deheishe refugee camp in the southern West Bank city of Bethlehem on Thursday at dawn and searched homes there.

The Zionist “soldiers” surrounded the refugee camp before invading it and clashed with dozens of local youths, who hurled stones and empty bottles at the military vehicles, while the army fired live rounds, rubber-coated steel bullets and gas bombs. Medical sources said the soldiers shot three Palestinians with live rounds before the medics moved them to hospital suffering moderate-but-stable wounds, while many suffered the effects of teargas inhalation.

Moreover, Dozens of Israeli soldiers invaded, on Thursday at dawn, the northern West Bank city of Nablus, and conducted extensive searches of homes before kidnapping seven Palestinians.

In the meantime, Israeli troops invaded late at night and at dawn, several areas in occupied Jerusalem, searched many homes and kidnapped four young Palestinian men.

All such terror operations happen without the knowledge of western capitals or their intelligence wings that care for freedoms, democracy, etc.

Despite lack of support from USA for the cause of freedom and sovereignty for Palestinians, there has been strong protest against Zionist occupational crimes inside Palestine.

The crude manner in which the Zionist criminals deal with besieged Palestinians has been criticized even by some Jewish leaders themselves. The day after the shooting of Palestinians recently, Tel Aviv’s Mayor Ron Huldai found the courage to state the obvious—that the state violence will persist until the occupation ends. Israel “is perhaps the only country in the world holding another nation under occupation without civil rights,” Huldai said.

Such frankness counts as bravery these days, but even Huldai was understating the truth. It’s not the mere fact of a military occupation, of Israeli troops on Palestinian territory, which provokes such attacks. It can be difficult to comprehend from across the Atlantic, or even from usually tranquil Tel Aviv, but the occupation, as many commentators have observed while reporting from the West Bank since 2011, functions as a massive mechanism for the creation of uncertainty, dispossession and systematic humiliation.

It is not just soldiers and guns, but a far-reaching structure that affects all aspects of Palestinian life—a complex web of checkpoints to harass and torture the Palestinians , travel restrictions, permits, walls and fences, courts and prisons, endless constraints on economic possibilities, home demolitions, land appropriations, expropriation of natural resources, and, too often, lethal force.

Crime and Punishment

Palestinians, the real owners of Palestine lands, are made now the enemy now whom Israel wants to kill enmasse. With Israeli state backing, the illegal settlers seemed a little crazy, but they are Jews the “boss” of Mideast.

Efrati, a Jew who quit Israeli army in protest against Zionist occupational crimes against humanity was earlier a part of the military in Jerusalem at the beginning of a war on Gaza Strip, targeting the children and women as well, that would leave more than 2,000 Palestinians dead. Efrati he spent most of 2006 and 2007 stationed in the southern West Bank city of Hebron, but had long since Gaza attack left the army and become an anti-occupation activist. Efrati was 19 when he arrived there and at the time saw little reason to question the Israeli military’s presence in the city. At his first briefing, he recalled an officer asking the troops what they would do if they saw a Palestinian running at a settler with a knife. “Of course the answer was you shoot him in the center of his body, Palestinians have no right to live ” Efrati said. The officer posed the question in reverse: What if it was the settler with a knife? “And the answer was you cannot do anything. The best you can do is call the police, but you’re not allowed to touch them. From day one the command was, ‘You cannot touch the illegal settlers and other Jews.’” This made sense to him, Efrati said.

A few days later, thousands of illegal settlers, mostly Russian speaking, arrived from all over the West Bank to celebrate a religious holiday. The army imposed a curfew to keep Palestinians off the streets to target the Palestinians. Efrati’s first task as a soldier in Hebron was to throw stun grenades into elementary school of Palestine children to announce the beginning of the curfew. “I just did it, like everyone Jew,” he said, “and within seconds, hundreds of kids ran outside. I was standing at the entrance and a lot of them looked at me in the eyes—that was the first time that it hit me. All of a sudden I understood what I was doing.

Later, Efrati recalled, settlers filled the central city. He was assigned to escort a group of them into the Patriarchs’ Tomb, a site holy to both Islam and Judaism, where Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob and their wives Sarah, Rebecca, and Leah are believed to be buried. The settlers were allowed into the Palestinian side of the site, even into the mosque with their dirty legs and blood stained hands. Israeli children were peeing on the floors and burning the carpets. Their parents were there—the mosque was packed with settlers—but no one was able to stop them. A Israeli criminal soldier grabbed one of the children and took a cigarette lighter from his hand. “He started screaming at us,” Efrati said. “We laughed at him.” Five minutes later, “one of our very, very high-ranking officers came inside the mosque and said, ‘Did you steal something from the kid?’” They tried to explain, but the officer only repeated the question. The officer ordered them to give it back and apologize and Jews have a right to smoke inside mosques . They found the child, apologized and returned the lighter. The boy ran right into the next room, Efrati said, and resumed setting fire to the carpets.

Things got weirder. Efrati was put in charge of a checkpoint separating the area of Hebron inhabited by settlers from the larger Palestinian city. He described it as grueling, mind-numbing work, standing in the cold for as long as 16 hours, usually hungry and always sleep-deprived. Inflicting humiliation was part of the assignment. Schoolteachers would cross dressed in suits and ties. The soldiers would make them strip in front of their students. “Sometimes we would make them wait for hours in their underwear,” Efrati said.

Pure entertainment for the criminal Jews in human suffering…

The pretext was to check them for weapons. “Nobody thought that anything would happen to them,” he said, but the troops were told again and again by their officers that all Palestinians were potential threats, that anyone might stab them if they dropped their guard for a moment. That notion meant to make the Jewish solders more arrogant , Efrati said, “made us very, very aggressive. So you would push them against the wall, undress them, take your weapon and hit them a few times.

That is Zionist democracy, not entirely different from American or NATO’s. “If he’s saying something, hit him.. Just make sure that you’re completely in control.” His conscience began to nag at him. He started bringing bags of Bamba—a popular Israeli snack food, like Cheez Doodles, only peanut flavored and not phosphorescent orange—to the checkpoint and offering them to children.

After a few days, “the first brave kid came up, grabbed a bag of Bamba and ran away.” Efrati was thrilled. Not long after, a Palestinian boy of about eight years old asked him for a treat. This boy didn’t run. He opened the bag, and offered some to Efrati. They sat and ate the chips together. When the boy walked off, Efrati felt ecstatic. He could finally be the man he wanted to be, a soldier who was loved for his kindness and who at the same time, as he put it, “was protecting my country from a second Holocaust.”

When he got back to the base that night, he was ordered to eat quickly and prepare for another shift, not at the checkpoint but on a “mapping” expedition into the section of the city governed by the Palestinian Authority. He was still so high from his success with the Bamba that he didn’t mind the extra work. The routine was simple: “You go into houses in the middle of the night, get everybody outside, take a photo of the family, and start going around the house, destroying things.” The idea was to search for weapons, “but we also needed to send a message,” Efrati said, to make sure the residents never lost “the feeling of being chased.” His job was to draft maps of each house, charting the rooms, the doors and the windows. “If at some point there was a retaliatory attack from that specific house,” the army would be ready.

That night, they searched, trashed and mapped two houses in the neighborhood of Abu Sneineh. It was snowy and cold. When they were done, the sun had not yet risen. They forced the family outside and into the snow and went in and started searching. Efrati opened the door to a child’s room—he remembered seeing a painting of Winnie-the-Pooh on one wall—and had begun sketching when he realized that there was someone in the bed. A young boy leaped out from under the covers. He was naked. Startled, Efrati raised his gun, aiming at the child. It was the kid from the checkpoint that afternoon. “He started peeing himself,” Efrati said, “and we were just shaking, both of us, we were just standing there shaking and we didn’t say a word.”

The boy’s father, coming down the stairs with an officer, saw Efrati pointing a rifle at his son and raced into the room. “But instead of pushing me back,” Efrati said, “he starts slapping his kid on the floor. He’s slapping him in front of me and he’s looking at me saying, ‘Please, please don’t take my child. Whatever he did, we’ll punish him.” In the end, the officer decided that the man’s behavior was suspicious, that “he was hiding something.” He ordered Efrati to arrest him. “So we took the father, blindfolded him, cuffed his hands behind his back and put him in a military jeep.”

They dumped him like that at the entrance to the base. “He stayed there for three days in a very torn-up shirt and boxer shorts. He just sat there in the snow.” Eventually, Efrati summoned the courage to ask his officer what would happen to the boy’s father. “He had totally forgotten about him, didn’t even know what I was talking about,” Efrati said. “He was like, ‘Which father?’” Efrati reminded him. “You can release him,” the officer said. “He learned his lesson.”

After cutting the plastic ties that bound the man’s wrists, untying the blindfold and watching him run off barefoot in his underwear through the streets, Efrati realized that he had never given his commander the maps he had drawn. He hurried back to the officer’s room, apologizing for his negligence. The officer wasn’t angry. “It’s okay,” he said. “You can throw them away.” It is just like that. Efrati was confused. He protested: wasn’t mapping a vital task that might save other soldiers’ lives?

The officer got annoyed. “He says, ‘Come on, Efrati. Stop bitching. Go away.’” But Efrati kept arguing. He didn’t understand. When it became apparent that he wasn’t going anywhere, the officer told him: “We’ve been doing mappings every night, three or four houses a night, for forty years.” He personally had searched and mapped the house in question twice before with other units. Israel is eager to terrorize the civilians everywhere and might knocks terrorize the local population, they pick young persons and never to return them to the families. At times, Palestinians run away through back doors when Israeli military knocks at their doors in the night and the never return homes.

Israeli military and police don’t entrain any complaints from Palestinian parents about their missing sons. If any Palestinian goes to police station or military officers with complaints they are told to go to Tel Aviv and meet the PM Netanyahu and complain to him or report to UN.

Cool guys, Israeli terrorists.

Israeli fascist regime is insane and wants to keep the Palestinians in the terrorization status. Efrati was even more confused. The officer took pity, and explained: “If we go into their houses all the time, if you arrest people all the time, if they feel terrified all the time, they will never attack us. They will only feel chased after.” That, Efrati said, “was the first time I understood that everything I was told was complete bullshit.” From then on, he said, “I didn’t stop doing the things I did, I just stopped thinking.”

Of course Efrati’s officer was wrong. If you terrorize people long enough, they eventually lose their fear. They hold onto the anger. This last October, after a year of relative calm, young Palestinians began attacking Israeli soldiers, police and civilians, occasionally with guns or cars but most often with household implements: knives, scissors, screwdrivers. The attacks were uncoordinated and outside the control of the Palestinian leadership or the traditional armed factions.

Many such reactions from Palestinians occurred in or near Hebron, often at checkpoints or other sites of friction between Palestinian civilians and the Israeli military, but also on buses and trains in Jerusalem, in supermarkets and in the streets.

Israeli military and police ransack Palestine territories with perpetual terrorization of peole on permanent basis.

World powers do not make any genuine steps to teach a bloody lesson to fanatically fascist Israel which also advices those countries like India purchasing terror goods from Tel Aviv depots to follow the terror footsteps of Israeli military in Palestine territories.

Terrorization of people by midnight knocks. .

Why do Palestine youth attack powerful Israeli army?

Will any one, individual or nation, fight against powerful nations? Certainly not, unless out of mere insanity. But Palestinians are facing dirtiest attacks from Israel, made powerful by USA and NATO, and also fighting the one of the dirtiest militaries in third world whose terror goods are being brought across the globe including India. .

Israel possesses not only illegal nukes but also strongest military terror equipment with regular updates from the world’s most powerful military called the Pentagon. Any nation, including Russia, is scared of the pentagon and CIA. Every power in West Asia fears Israeli military might. But the powerless and defenseless Palestinians are not afraid of it and fights against its illegal occupation of Palestine lands and its expansionist-murder strategy by sacrificing their own valuable lives.

Continued occupation crimes of Israeli military forces against the besieged Palestinians force the Palestinians to retaliate to Zionist attacks with small scale attacks.

In November, Major General Herzl Halev, Israel’s highest ranking military intelligence officer, explained to PM B. Netanyahu’s cabinet that the Palestinian attacks were not primarily ideological. They were motivated by rage and frustration and carried out by youth—mainly teenagers—who “felt they had nothing to lose.” In fact, they had a great deal to lose, as much as anyone, their whole lives ahead of them. But the fact that so many were willing to throw it away, and to take others with them, testifies to the depths of the despair bred by Israel’s occupation.

Until Wednesday’s shootings, only Palestinians got killed and no Israelis had been killed by Palestinians since February 18. In the same period, Israeli security forces killed 34 Palestinians, including a six-year-old girl and her 10-year-old brother who died when an air strike hit their family’s home in the Gaza Strip. Their names were Israa and Yasin Abu Khussa.

Such Israeli murders rarely make headlines here, but Palestinians are well aware of them. So long as they continue, and the occupation drags on, world can expect many more opportunities to grieve. That is exactly what Netanyahu and his government continued to do.

Fifty years into Israel’s occupation of the West Bank, Israel’s government is continuing its “preemptive and predetermined” territorial changes and a policy of clandestine ethnic cleansing in what the Oslo Accords designated as Area C, which constitutes over 60 percent of the West Bank. As for the USA, the mischievous mediator for peace talks, it continues to pretend it believes Netanyahu’s claim that he is seeking a two-state solution, and continues to assure Israel that it will not allow “any daylight”—and any Security Council resolutions—to come between the USA and Israel.

American regime shields the Zionist crimes by misusing its veto on UNSC.

If in fact world no longer believes Netanyahu’s lies, his two state theory, then its tendency of “balancing” even the mildest reproaches of Israel’s never-ending occupation with condemnations of Palestinian incitement is particularly reprehensible. Whatever the Palestinian Authority may be guilty of by delaying to file cases against Israeli crimes, it pales into insignificance when compared to the incitement that is Israel’s half-century long fascist occupation.

Zionist fascism in Palestine functions as a massive mechanism for the creation of uncertainty, dispossession and systematic humiliation. It is not just soldiers and guns, but a far-reaching structure that affects all aspects of Palestinian life—a complex web of check points, travel restrictions, permits, walls and fences, courts and prisons, endless constraints on economic possibilities, home demolitions, land appropriations, expropriations of natural resources, and, too often lethal force.

Neither the USA nor the UNSC nor the Quartet’s diplomacy has the slightest prospect of changing the status quo that Netanyahu has so successfully entrenched if they cannot screw up the courage to state straightforwardly the truth—that Israel’s half-century long occupation and genocides not only incites to violence but itself constitutes violence incarnate on a massive scale. The injection of such truthfulness might perhaps help flush the diplomatic channels that have for so long been clogged by pretense and dishonesty, indirectly supporting Zionist fascism.

Unfortunately, shamefully!

Failing Indian Gandhiism: After 16 years of nonviolent struggle, Irom Sharmila ends hunger strike!

Failing Indian Gandhiism: After 16 years of nonviolent struggle, Irom Sharmila ends hunger strike!
-Dr. Abdul Ruff
______

Indian government has been insensitive to many of problems of common men and concerning India’s real prestige. Indian rulers, cutting across the color of their politics, just crush any movement that is not promoting their interests. Nonviolent agitations also do not make any difference to their political and profit objectives.

May be as a game or joke, or by mistake India annexed Kashmir but once it has done it, now Indian regime does not allow any criticism of Indian state terror operations in Kashmir. That is Indian petrified mindset. India has moved fast into the imperialist forces to somehow retain Kashmir.

Kashmir is only an example but even inside India the scenario is not impressive at all as Indian actions showcase its terror prowess and colonialist mindset. Though it claims to be parliamentary democracy, it lets military to decide crucial matters. Here is a crude story of a failed Gandhian struggle in India, regulated by the military.

For 16 years, Irom Sharmila was on a hunger strike in Manipur in North Eastern India against the imposition of the dreadful Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA) and demanding the scrapping of draconian military laws that crippled the ordinary life of the state as people always feel they are being chased by the state.

A highly disappointed Irom Sharmila, who used Gandhian means of peaceful protest to get justice for her state from central government , has failed to achieve e the chief objective so far and has announced on July 25 her decision to end her long years on hunger strike w.e.f. August 10. The activist said that she no longer believed that her protest would motivate the state into scrapping the AFSPA. However, the fight to eliminate AFSPA will go on. What will change is the method of struggle. The activist said she would fight elections in Manipur to take forward the struggle against AFSPA.

Irom Sharmila said she hoped that her peaceful and torturous act of protest and self-denial would push the state towards withdrawing the draconian AFSPA from Manipur. Since November 2000 — when soldiers from the Assam Rifles shot dead 10 civilians, Sharmila has been on an indefinite fast, refusing to eat or drink.

Instead of saving her life by making an effort to scrap the deadly laws, Indian government (Both Congress and BJP) charged her with attempt to commit suicide Charged with attempting suicide, the activist has been repeatedly arrested, detained and force-fed through nasal tubes. But she has continued on the difficult path of protest even when the state has shown no signs of relenting.

On July 25, Irom Sharmila announced her decision to end her long years on hunger strike on 9 August. The activist said that she no longer believed that her protest would motivate the state into scrapping the AFSPA. However, the fight to eliminate AFSPA will go on. What will change is the method of struggle. The activist said she would fight elections in Manipur to take forward the struggle against AFSPA.

Significantly, Sharmila’s decision draws attention to the fundamental characteristics that define the Indian State when it comes to dealing with such protests. The Indian State plays mischief, appears to be impervious to essentially peaceful acts of resistance even when protesters turn violence upon themselves rather than their adversaries. In the face of the state’s consistent refusal to seriously engage with peaceful resistance, hunger strikes can appear to be both naïve and flawed as a strategy of protest.

Time and again, it has been evident that the state ignores peaceful protests.

The paradox, however, is that the very same state which turns a blind eye to nonviolent resistance, nevertheless continually insists that all protesters adopt peaceful and not confrontational methods of agitation. In fact, protesters transgressing conventional forms of dissent are routinely labeled “anarchists” by the state; or denounced as saboteurs who create chaos and violence in the political and social order.

The objective reality is that it is aggressive — or even violent — forms of protest that propel the state to take serious notice of the causes that foment such resistance. Nonviolent agitations are always relegated to the background. For instance, in 2012, the Madhya Pradesh state government ignored hundreds of farmers who submerged themselves neck-deep in water for 17 long days. Through their jal Satyagraha, villagers were protesting the construction of a dam that was going to inundate their lands.

Further back in history, the peaceful protests led by Gandhian activist Medha Patkar (from the Narmada Bachao Andolan), also came to naught. That movement aimed against the construction of big dams on the Narmada River. The project threatened to displace large numbers of people and submerge thousands of acres of lands underwater. The governments in the states of Gujarat and Madhya Pradesh — as well as at the Centre — refused to back down.

Social activist Anna Hazare undertook a fast until death for an assurance of Jan Lokpal in order to bring every big official into the purview of the system to curb rampant corruption of Congress party led government. But Hazare could not achieve that and removed his Gandhian cap to force the Congress government to accept his demand and eventually the Manmohan regime had to use a trick to oust him from the fasting site. As the UPA government felt losing its ground to Anna Hazare and BJP, Sonia-Manmohan sent a minister to promise action on Lokpal just as a usual ploy. They did not know that they were losing power to Kejriwal-Hazare movement that would benefit the BJP waiting in the wings.

There is of course a strong case to be made for withdrawing the AFSPA in Manipur (and other parts of India) where — for six decades — it has functioned as a repressive law that authorizes excesses. Serious concerns about its continuation in the state have been expressed not just by human rights activists but also the apex court of the country. Recently, hearing petitions that demanded a probe into 1,528 deaths in counterinsurgency operations in Manipur, the Supreme Court observed that the immunity the AFSPA offers to the security forces — using excessive force “even to the extent of causing death” — is not invincible.

If one compares these forms of resistance — that the Indian State deems ‘acceptable’ — to the tactics of the Maoists or separatist groups in Kashmir, the contrast becomes even clearer. In both the latter cases, whatever one thinks of the politics of the groups involved, there is little doubt that their cause has been ‘tabled’ on the national agenda in a visible manner. It seems then, that the Indian State (parties cutting across political lines) prefers nonviolent protest precisely because it can ignore such actions and let the protesters exhaust themselves.

Now, as Irom Sharmila ends her hunger strike and enters electoral (or even other forms of politics,) her equation with the State is likely to drastically change. Although electoral politics is one method by which the state likes to co-opt all opposition voices into the same system, this isn’t always the case. As the anti-corruption movement that began under Anna Hazare and culminated in the present expansion of the Aam Aadmi Party across the country shows, sometimes not playing by the rules of the game brings its own rewards.

Indian government seeks only violent movements that could be put down by the military and police forces and claim victory abroad over domestic problems. Though the government is sworn by Gandhian philosophy and ideas and ideals theoretically in practice, it opposes any Gandhian margs (directions and routes).
India cannot tolerate any type of protests, Gandhian inclusive, by anybody to achieve their objective even if not exclusively against the government or its draconian laws or any other matter.

Irom Sharmila’s non-violent struggle may have failed but her ideas, ideals and goals have not been defeated once for all, however. But she should be happy that she is alive because if a Muslim had undertaken such fasting should have been put in jail under sedition law or killed in a fake encounter as a suspected terrorist for which India would get automatic support of all anti-Islamic nations globally.

Indian media would have forced the government to teach a terror lesson to her. Had the person been a Kashmiri Muslim, she would have “disappeared” once for all and only next discovery of “consignment” of secret graveyard could provide some clue about her “missing” fate

It is a shame that Indian regime deliberately fails Gandhian philosophy, Gandhian ideas and hi cherished ideals.

India: after 16 years of struggle, Irom Sharmila would now end hunger strike!

India: after 16 years of struggle, Irom Sharmila would now end hunger strike!
-Dr. Abdul Ruff
______

On July 25 , Irom Sharmila announced her decision to end her long years on hunger strike on 9 August. The activist said that she no longer believed that her protest would motivate the state into scrapping the AFSPA. However, the fight to eliminate AFSPA will go on. What will change is the method of struggle. The activist said she would fight elections in Manipur to take forward the struggle against AFSPA.

Time and again, it has been evident that the state ignores peaceful protests.

But the objective reality is that it is aggressive — or even violent — forms of protest that propel the state to take serious notice of the causes that foment such resistance. Nonviolent agitations are always relegated to the background. For instance, in 2012, the Madhya Pradesh state government ignored hundreds of farmers who submerged themselves neck-deep in water for 17 long days. Through their jal Satyagraha, villagers were protesting the construction of a dam that was going to inundate their lands.

Indian government seeks only violent movements that could be put down by the military and police forces and claim victory abroad over domestic problems. .Though the government is sworn by Gandhian philosophy and ideas and ideals theoretically in practice, it opposes any Gandhian margs (directions and routes).
India cannot tolerate any Gandhian type protest by anybody to achieve their objective against the government or its draconian laws or any other matter. Social activist Anna Hazare undertook a fast until death for an assurance of Jan Lokpal in order to bring every big official into the purview of the system to curb rampant corruption of Congress party led government.
But Hazare could not achieve that and removed his Gandhian cap to force the Congress government to accept his demand and eventually the Manmohan regime had to use a trick to oust him from the fasting site. As the UPA government felt losing its ground to Anna Hazare and BJP, Sonia-Manmohan sent a minister to promise action on Lokpal just as a usual ploy. They did not know that they were losing power to Kejriwal-Hazare movement that would benefit the BJP waiting in the wings.

Turkey returns to normalcy under emergency, after coup!

Turkey returns to normalcy under emergency, after coup!

-Dr. Abdul Ruff

______

For five days in a row since the failed coup, people have taken to the streets here to show their support for President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and the government. In the heart of Turkish capital Istanbul, Turkish flags dominate Taksim Square, as if saluting the AKP government for brave action to put down the military coup and save and safeguard the nation from possible destabilization.

Today, Turkey is a proud nation by retaining sovereignty from the coup plotters and their foreign sponsors. Popular newspapers declared: “No compromise from democracy”, highlighting President Erdogan’s comments. Another read: “State of emergency for the coup plotters, peace for the citizens”. Media have fully comprehended the danger Turkey was facing a just few days ago.

On the steps of Gezi Park, which was the epicenter of anti-government protests three years ago, is a recently-erected platform. Between them hangs a banner with a Turkish flag imprinted on it that reads: “Sovereignty belongs to the Nation”.

After the failed coup, the crackdown followed. In fact, as soon as it became clear that the coup had failed, the crackdown began – first with the security forces, then spreading to Turkey’s entire civilian infrastructure. In the words of one Turkish columnist it was a “counter-coup” – a cleansing of the system, in the style of a coup, which had taken place in the past. The express aim of the president is to “cleanse all state institutions”. And the target is what he calls “the parallel state” – a movement headed by an arch-rival in self-imposed exile in the US, accused of plotting the coup.

The number of people arrested or thrown out of their jobs stretches into the tens of thousands. From judges to teachers, civil servants to soldiers, the list is extensive. There are very real fears among anti-Islamic and anti-Turkish people about what will come next.

Turkey’s armed forces have been dealt a significant psychological blow by the attempted coup, and their prestige and status have been damaged.

Coup took the people by shock as Turks had assumed that coups were a thing of the past. Not only does this latest plot come as a threat to the country’s democracy but it has also stymied its ability to act in its key role as a provider of regional security.

Shattered lives

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s declared aim is to root out followers of a former ally, Islamic cleric Fethullah Gulen, who became his arch-rival and went into self-imposed exile in the US in 1999. Fethullah Gulen has made a lot of enemies but he also has a large number of followers and they are accused of plotting the coup. Gulenists, who espouse a tolerant form of Islam, are thought to donate up to 20% of their income to the movement. They have roles in all sectors of Turkish society and local reports say some Gulenists have confessed to involvement in the attempted coup.

The order, one follower was quoted as saying, came from a civilian teacher known as Big Brother. Exactly who is a Gulenist is very hard to assess, but President Erdogan blamed the movement for damaging corruption allegations that entangled the sons of several Turkish ministers in 2013.

At Caglayan Court House, families of privates and military students accused of taking part in the coup attempt await the latest news. Ahmet’s 16-year-old son, studying at a military high school in Istanbul, was detained and imprisoned.

Turkey’s crippled morale

Turkey’s armed forces had already been trying to recover from the prosecution of high-ranking officers caught up in two cases that were eventually overturned. This botched coup has reversed this scenario. More than 100 generals have been detained for their involvement, amounting to nearly a third of Turkey’s high-ranking officers. Almost all major army units have lost at least one of their commanding officers. Aside from the top brass, the purges have so far resulted in the arrest of more than 3,000 soldiers and some 7,500 police officers.

Whilst the purges are undoubtedly necessary in light of the acute threat posed by the conspirators, they will inevitably cripple the morale and capabilities of the Turkish forces, which are currently facing a series of unprecedented threats. In addition to numerous one- and two-star generals, the alleged conspirators include Adem Huduti, who commanded the 2nd Army.

The 2nd Army has the task of protecting the most perilous borders – with Syria, Iraq and Iran – and leads the fight against the Kurdish militant PKK in south-eastern Turkey. So the attempted coup may have a considerable impact on Turkey’s ongoing fight against the PKK.

The failed putsch will also affect the combat against jihadist group Islamic State (ISIS). IS has escalated its operations in Turkey substantially over the last year. Both dismantling its networks within the country and preventing the transit of jihadists from Syria require close collaboration between the armed forces, police and national intelligence. Yet by targeting the police and national intelligence headquarters and clashing with police forces throughout the night, the coup plotters have destroyed all mutual trust and confidence between the three pillars of Turkish security.

Furthermore, as long as the purges continue in military and police ranks, neither side is likely to fully embrace the other as a trustworthy partner. This will come as a major complication in Turkey’s effectiveness in tackling IS. This mistrust is also likely to characterize how the country’s political leadership will view the armed forces, at least until it is confident that the conspirators have been weeded out. Nonetheless, the aftershocks of the plot will continue to plague civilian-military relations for the foreseeable future.

NATO fears

What is more, Turkey’s ability to contribute to NATO is likely to be reduced visibly, as both an effective deterrence posture and force projection rely strongly on the cohesion between the political and military elites over the strategic objectives of the country,

The coup attempt may also push the leadership into rethinking the country’s involvement in the anti-IS coalition, given that a number of fighter planes that took part used Incirlik airbase. The base also hosts foreign aircraft belonging to the anti-IS coalition. Though it failed to unseat Turkey’s elected government, the 15 July coup plot succeeded in hampering Turkey’s ability to protect itself and to act as a security provider in a volatile region that will continue to present complex security challenges for Nato.

It is not only for Turkey’s sake but for NATO’s too that the Transatlantic Alliance will need to stand by Turkey at this difficult time. No-one really knows how extensive that movement is, but followers of cleric Fethullah Gulen are suspected of infiltrating some of the posts closest to the president, including chief military aide Ali Yazici and air force adviser Lt Col Erkan Kivrak, A “Gulenist clique” in the army was behind the coup, officials say. And they came so close, says the president that they were within 10 or 15 minutes of assassinating or kidnapping him.

The purge is so extensive that few believe it was not already planned. And there seems little chance that everyone on the list is a Gulenist. The sheer numbers are sobering. Some 9,000 people are in custody and many more are out of a job. Although accurate details are difficult to come by, this is the current list:

President Erdogan has seen the rise of Islamic education in Turkey’s schools and universities as a personal mission. Since his Islamist-rooted party came to power in 2002, the number of children educated in segregated religious schools known as “Imam-Hatip” has soared by 90%. He has repeatedly said he wants to raise a “pious generation” and has reformed state education accordingly.

Erdogan sought to reverse the many closures of religious schools that came in the wake of Turkey’s last coup in 1997, which he compared to the cutting of an artery. He has also moved to shut down Gulenist-run schools outside Turkey. Reports from Romania say Turkish officials have told 11 to close, but the schools argue they fall under Romanian rather than Turkish jurisdiction.

What is less clear is why university deans are also being targeted. The officials told to leave their posts are unlikely to be Gulenists. There is some suggestion that a revamp of Turkey’s 300 universities is being prepared. On Wednesday, Turkey’s higher education authority banned academics from travelling abroad and said anyone currently outside Turkey should return home. This could hark back to a 2010 cheating scandal in Turkey’s civil service exams. When 3,227 were suspected of cheating because they scored top marks, the government suspected Gulenists.

The post-coup purge may be the time to get rid of the suspected cheats. Another possibility is that the government is also weeding out opponents from Turkey’s Alevi community, which numbers some 15 million. Turkey’s ruling AKP is predominantly a Sunni Muslim party which gains support from an Islamist base. The Alevi sect combines elements of Shia Islam with pre-Islamic folk customs.

What will Erdogan do next?

There are deep suspicions and widespread fears of what the president is planning next. He is expected to make a major announcement on Wednesday. Some have compared the crackdown to the fallout of the military coup of 12 September 1980. But that resulted in executions and 600,000 detentions, so current events are far less dramatic.

There seems little chance of martial law being declared, as the army is so deeply damaged by the botched coup. But emergency measures could be on the cards. Detention without charge could be extended and firing civil servants could be approved without the need for parliamentary approval.

Will there be curfews? That seems unlikely when it suits the government to have supporters on the streets at night. Will the death penalty be reinstated 12 years after its abolition?

Observation

Recap: Coup attempt launched in Istanbul and Ankara on 15 July midnight ; Bosphorus bridges blocked in Istanbul; warplanes attack police and intelligence buildings in Ankara;: President Erdogan, who is on holiday in south-west Turkey, appears on CNN Turk via Face Time to urge resistance; Parliament in Ankara is bombed and soldiers and tanks fire at protesters; 03:00 President Erdogan arrives safely at Istanbul airport and is mobbed by supporters; 06:00 Soldiers surrender on the Bosphorus bridges; At least 260 people were killed and 1,400 wounded

The forces’ integrity will be hard to salvage and chronic problems in Turkey’s civilian-military relations, which many thought had been recuperating in the past few years, will now be exacerbated instead.

Amongst the government’s critics there are concerns that the announcement of a state of emergency might lead to more authoritarian rule, giving President Erdogan greater powers to sideline parliament.

Thousands gathered here to watch President Erdogan on giant screens on Wednesday night as he announced the implementation of a three-month state of emergency. Some in the crowd burst into applause, clearly appreciative of the measure. President Erdogan pledged that the country’s democracy would not be harmed and fundamental rights and freedoms would not be curbed. “This step is taken to cleanse the supporters of the Fethullah Gulen terrorist organisation from state bureaucracy, to place the state in strong hands in order to make democracy function better,” he said.

Deputy Prime Minister Numan Kurtulmus assured Turks on Thursday that the government would not declare any curfews, free market rules would not be affected and fundamental rights would not be compromised. “Our business has suffered. People do not want to go out on the streets unless they have to,” says Kemal, a taxi driver. “Now we have to wait and see. If they abuse the power to issue decrees, then we will be facing further problems,” he says. “I am anxious for the future of Turkey,” says an academic whose work-trip to Canada has been blocked due to the latest crackdown. He does not want to give his name, and says no more.

Public perception of the armed forces had already been hit in recent years by allegations of coup plots against the AKP government of Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Importantly, those cases were eventually thrown out because of mostly fabricated evidence.

The attempted coup and the previous alleged plots have been blamed on Fetullah Gulen, a controversial US-based Islamic cleric, whose movement is suspected of infiltrating public and private ranks with the eventual aim of taking over the reins of the country.

Mideast Peace: UNSC should act to freeze Israeli settlements in West Bank!

Mideast Peace: UNSC should act to freeze Israeli settlements in West Bank!
-Dr. Abdul Ruff
_____

Israel obstacle to peace

Israeli criminal regime exists due mainly to its illegal operations as a part of its state policy of expansionism, backed by imperialist USA and its fascist NATO allies.

Palestinian authority has once again called on the United Nations Security Council to act against Israeli settlement building, in the wake of the latest Jerusalem Municipality’s decision, on instruction from Tel Aviv, to advance 770 new Jewish homes in its Gilo neighborhood, which is located over the Green Line. “This is yet another opportunity for the international community to show its real commitment for the two-state solution, and to take all needed action in order to have Israel fully cease settlement construction in the occupied state of Palestine,” said PLO Secretary-General Saeb Erekat.

Erekat said that he has asked the State of Egypt and the leaders of Arab countries to call for an urgent meeting of the Arab Quartet, in order to submit a draft resolution to the United Nations Security Council to halt settlement expansion.”

Discrimination based on religion, race and sex would be illegal in any other civilized country. But Israel argues its illegal settlement law is final and ultimate. It added that building for Jews is advanced everywhere in the capital based on Zionist “construction laws” and the city’s master zoning plan, and that such construction is important to ensure the city’s future by providing housing for young couples.

Terror state’s criminal settlements

Though Tel Aviv is its large capital as approved by all big powers, including USA and UK, Israel , in order to deny the Palestinians their right to make Jerusalem its capital, maintains that Jerusalem would remain its united capital in any final status agreement with the Palestinians for a two-state solution if the world wants. As such, it argues that it has a right to build Jewish houses for its criminal minded “residents” in all areas of the city. “We won’t lend a hand to a freeze of Jewish building in Israel’s capital,” said the Jerusalem municipality.

Israel uses its illegal settlements inside Palestine territories to get maximum concessions from Palestine and Quartet member states. The plan for what is known as Gilo’s southern slope was submitted on July 21 before the Jerusalem District and Planning Committee, which means that there is now a 60-day objection period. Initial approval for the project was given in 2012, as the UN General Assembly voted to upgrade Palestine’s status by recognizing it as a non-member state, rather than an observer mission. The municipality said that depositing the plans was simply a technical action that followed from that initial 2012 approval.

According to the non-governmental group Ir Amim, the project if approved would help solidify Israel’s iron-terror hold on the southwest perimeter of the capital, which abuts both the Palestinian city of Bethlehem and the Gush Etzion area of the West Bank.

The municipality is already building 797 new homes on Gilo’s western slope, near the site slated for the new 770 unit project. Gilo is located near the Jewish neighborhood of Har Homa, and the location of what will be the new Jewish neighborhood of Givat Hamatos. Palestinians have argued that an Israeli action in that end of the city is creating a wedge that is isolating Bethlehem from Israeli- Arab neighborhoods of the city and the surrounding Palestinian villages.

Israel-US terror twins fool world on two state solutions

Israel has been isolated on Palestine issue but it still calls all shots thanks to USA. Off and on Tel Aviv does talk about “two state solution” but only as a ploy to fool the world. Any wedge, real or artificial, the Palestinians have claimed, would make it difficult to enact a two-state solution that places east Jerusalem within the boundaries of a Palestinian state. “While Israeli ministers complain about a ‘building freeze,’ Israel continues its policy of one-sided actions that complicate and distance the possibility for a two-state solution,” said Ir Amim. “The past year makes it clear that the peace and security which Israelis deserve require a totally different policy.”

Erekat said that “Israeli settlement construction in general, and in and around Occupied East Jerusalem in particular, is part of Israel’s political decision to bury the two-state solution by consolidating its illegal occupation and apartheid regime over the Palestinian people.”

The UN condemned the Gilo project, and said it too was concerned by its impact on the diplomatic process. “I reiterate that settlements are illegal under international law, and urge the government of Israel to cease and reverse such decisions,” said Nickolay Mladenov, the UN’s special coordinator to the Middle East peace process. He noted that earlier this month the Quartet — composed of the United States, Russia, the UN and the European Union — had issued a report in which it called on Israel to stop such building. “Continuing on the current trajectory entrenches a one-state reality of perpetual occupation and conflict that is incompatible with realizing the national aspirations of both peoples,” he added.

Mladenov said he was also worried about reports that settlers were attempting to rebuild an outpost in the Kiryat Arba settlement, known as Mitzpe Avichai. The two projects, he said, “come against the backdrop of statements by some Israeli ministers that there should never be a Palestinian state or calls for the full annexation of the West Bank. Such moves raise legitimate questions about Israel’s long-term intentions.”
PLO Secretary General, Dr. Saeb Erekat on Monday had strongly condemned the decision of the occupation authorities to advance plans to build 770 units in the illegal settlement of Gilo, built on lands of the Palestinian towns and villages of: Beit Jala, Beit Safafa and Wallajeh, between Bethlehem and Occupied East Jerusalem. “This approval comes as Israel continues the construction of its Annexation Wall in the same area (Cremisan), as part of Israel’s settlement enterprise in the Occupied State of Palestine,” Erekat said. In an official statement, Erekat said that such a decision further reflects the failure of the international community to stop Israel’s settlement expansion.

The decision comes as Israel receives more assurances that no action will be taken against its illegal policies of colonization and annexation of Occupied Territory, a war crime under International law. Israeli settlement construction in general, and in and around Occupied East Jerusalem in particular, is part of Israel’s political decision to bury the two-state solution by consolidating its illegal occupation and Apartheid regime over the Palestinian people.”

However, Erekat said that this is yet another opportunity for the international community to show its real commitment for the two-state solution and take all needed action in order to have Israel fully cease settlement construction in the Occupied State of Palestine. “We have asked the State of Egypt and the leaders of Arab countries during our recent visit to call for an urgent meeting of the Arab Quartet in order to submit a draft resolution to the United Nations Security Council to halt settlement expansion.” Erekat added. He concluded that the PA will continue to exert all efforts to confront the Israeli illegal colonization projects with all possible tools towards ending the occupation and establishing our independent sovereign state on 1967 borders with East Jerusalem as its capital.

Meanwhile, Russian President Vladimir Putin has said that Moscow considers the existing status quo on Palestine inadmissible and calls for relaunching the negotiation process. “We also intend to continue to provide all possible assistance in resolving the Palestinian problem acting through both the bilateral channels and within various multilateral formats,” the head of state said in his message of greetings to the heads of state and government of the Arab League member-countries. “We believe the existing status quo in unacceptable and favor creating the conditions for the speedy relaunching of the negotiation process that will be aimed at creating an independent, viable and integral Palestinian state with its capital in East Jerusalem peacefully coexisting with its neighbors,” the president said.

Russia did propose to mediate between the two and find a amicable solution. USA disapproves of Russian role in any peace talks between Palestine and Israel.

The US Role in the Israeli-Palestine Conflict

While with its expansionist-holocaust agenda in Palestine, Israel remains the unavoidable obstacle to peace in West Asia- beyond Mideast- USA with its immoral backing to the illegal regime and its crimes against Palestinians makes developments worse for the besieged Palestinians.
In fact it is the support of USA and its imperialist allies that forces Israeli military and Mossad to keep attacking the Palestinians, killing even children so that they could achieve a total and complete holocaust of Palestinians and Israel could be the owners of all Palestinian lands. A full expansionism!
This immoral and illegal partnership extends back to the creation of the Jewish state when the United States recognized it. The history of this partnership has been described in many books, in the beginning, mostly favorable to Israel then gradually, over the years, becoming more and more hostile to it as the truth of Israel’s activities to establish itself as a nuke cum terror nation in Palestine at the expense of the indigenous population of the Palestinian peoples has come to light.
Israel has succeeded during its expansionist regime in Mideast upon its imposition on Palestine lands, in fully terrorizing the Palestinians and at same time naming them the so-called “terrorists”. USA and its fascist allies now call the victims in Palestine as theorists and aggressor Israel as the “affected” nation.
In fact, it is the Palestinians who face a real existential threat from US-Israeli terror twins – and not Israel as Madam Clinton keeps crying loud for the Jewish votes in the poll for the presidency. After all, Israel literally controls entire West Asia and entire third world which it sells terror goods, including India, a so-called terror victim a so-called terror victim.
It should come as no surprise to anyone who has paid some attention to horrors of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict over the years, that America, a staunch defender of Zionist crimes on UNSC by its veto, has been playing mischief by actively playing an effective partner in Israel’s continued effacement of Palestine from the map of the Middle East.
Of course, the hardcore fanatics Zionists who run Israel deny that there is hostility to its misrule, and the Zionists in the Jewish Diaspora in the US, UK, Europe and elsewhere fully support this line. However, more and more of those very people are beginning to wonder if Israel’s position in the world is as acceptable as it could be had it not turned from its original hopes for a peaceful home for the Jewish people into a war mongering nautilus attempting to divide the Middle East into a splintering of failed states. In this, the United States is perfectly complicit, if not actually the main cause.
Obviously, Israeli soldiers enjoy Palestinian blood and flesh of children.

Israel has used the US as its protector and supporter, while the US has used Israel as the raison d’être for its own bellicosity in the Middle East and other parts of the world. Jeremy Hammond has taken upon himself the task of explaining in great detail the relationship between Israel and the US, and how the US aids and abets the Jewish State to sustain a stranglehold on the Palestinians. In fact, is quite easy to explain the blood thirsty behavior of Israeli Jews and hatred of Global Jews for Islam. USA and Europe also have similar hate “feelings” toward Islam and Palestine.

Observation

For years, the world has been wondering why Israel and the Palestinians cannot sit down over a peace pipe and work out their differences. It would seem simple to end the killing and suffering of thousands of Palestinians and a few Jewish peoples. But Israel makes it difficult even for USA, Russia and France to create two independent and equal states side by side, and it opposes merger into one secular state with all citizens having equal rights.

The rise of Hamas and the Zionist aggression in the name of Operation Cast Lead, the first war on Gaza (more of a chicken-shoot slaughter than a war) show Israel controls the behavior of Palestinians in general and Hamas and others in Gaza in particular . The numerous attempts at a peace process were never planned to succeed and solve the crisis. The hypocrisy of Obama and his role in obstructing progress in making peace did not let the bogus peace talks to succeed.

A two-state solution alone can find an end to this crisis. Now, some experts believe that if a one-state solution is what is ultimately sought, then Palestine must have sovereignty through its own state before it can negotiate on equal terms for sharing one state. That sounds logical, but given Israel’s and America’s intransigence, there is no way a two solution could ever be attained.
Israel is adamant as the illegal occupier of Palestine. As Israel plays mischief and hides behind the Pentagon-CIA twins, peace talks, tried many times, and peace seems further away today than ever before.
In every instant of Israel’s crimes against humanity, the USA seconds Israel’s justifications. But then, given the US’ own crimes against humanity in its illegal wars against Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, etc., why wouldn’t they?
American foreign policy has failed miserably and one of the major causes is Israel whose genocides it is bent upon defending. . .

Who instigated coup in Turkey?

Who instigated coup in Turkey?
-Dr. Abdul Ruff
______

At this point of time, it is not possible to spot the foreign forces that are behind the coup operations in the midnight. However, once the tools used for the coup are ascertained, the forces that would have benefited from the destabilization of Turkey would automatically get exposed- other way round as well.
USA and EU should be the possible instigators of the coup, besides Gulen an opponent of President Erdogan who now lives in USA. Apparently, Foreign ministers of USA and Germany namely Kerry and Steinmeier and other ruthless defenders of imperialist interests may have stood behind the anti-Islamic coup in Istanbul. The sensitivity of American interests involved is indicated by the fact that Incirlik airbase, one of the centres of the rebels, stores 50 American nuclear warheads. USA wants to focus on its global airbases, including in Turkey.
Tensions between the government of President Erdogan and US led Western capitalist governments have intensified in recent weeks—over the Kurdish question, the Syrian war and rapprochement between Turkey and Russia. It is inconceivable, therefore, that the Turkish officers would have dared launch the coup against a formidable and popular government without support and encouragement from the American, British and German governments that say “care’ for complete freedom while the locals are ill-treated as suspected terrorists.
It is becoming abundantly clear now that all coup plots in select countries with strategic importance are being engineered in Washington. In fact, the so-called Arab Spring was launched by USA to destabilize Arab nations while making Israel unaffected and stronger.
One doubts if the American and German governments supported, if not behind, the failed coup in Turkey, but there can be no doubt that they supported the rebels politically and had hoped for their success. Failure of the coup, seeking another color revolution, is not in fact welcomed by these two nations.
One might have expected that an armed insurrection within the ranks of the second-largest NATO military after the Pentagon , with which both the American and German armed forces collaborate in the military alliance’s command structure and in daily war missions, would have unleashed a storm of condemnation, comment and debate in all NATO countries, especially in USA, UK and Germany. . But nothing of the sort occurred.
USA, though a close ally of Turkey, sought destabilization of Islamist government of Erdogan’s AKP party in Istanbul and is still eager to replace Islamic Turkey with a corrupt democratic anti-Islamic, so-called secular regime. US Secretary of State John Kerry issued a statement from Moscow at 11pm, local time when it looked as if the coup might succeed and Kerry was at pains to avoid speaking definitively. He did not quickly condemn the coup to oust the elected government, but called in general terms for “stability and continuity within Turkey. When it looked the plotters would lose and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan had called via Face Time for the people to resist, half an hour later, and the situation had begun to turn in AKP government’s favor, did Kerry and President Obama call for support for the “democratically elected government of Turkey.” They had to say that because Turkey is a prominent NATO member.
Only next morning, when Erdogan had already finished with the coup, did German foreign minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier pipe up and condemned “any attempt to alter the democratic order in Turkey by force.” In the afternoon, Chancellor Angela Merkel condemned the coup attempt in a brief statement to the press.
Had the coup succeeded, the USA and EU jointly would have supported it readily supplying reasons for that, as they had backed the all invasions of US led NATO of Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria and the 2014 coup in Ukraine and the bloody counterrevolution in Egypt the previous year.

Both USA and Germany responded to the failed coup rather coolly and coldly. Both had expected the coup to succeed but the sudden return of President Erdogan made things worse for the coup plotters and these western powers. Washington and Berlin allowed much time to pass before tersely condemning the coup, only speaking out unequivocally when it was clear that the rebels had failed.
Gradually, the criticism from politicians and media outlets has been directed almost exclusively against Turkish President Erdogan and AKP Islamist government – the target of the attempted coup. As President Erdogan launched a needy purge of the state and military apparatus of their agents operating in Istanbul to destabilize the former Ottoman Empire, the US and German ruling elites became deadly angry saying that he is using the failed coup to act against his “internal opponents” and strengthen his Islamist supporters.
While criticisms of the rebels are hardly to be heard, politicians on both sides of the Atlantic are warning the Turkish regime against “revenge, acting arbitrarily and the misuse of power,” and urging observance of the “rule of law and democratic principles.” The media in NATO nations is playing a particularly cynical role in this campaign, pumping out government propaganda and making no secret of its sympathy for the rebels.
In fact, the USA and EU are angry that their coup failed. Their mischief gets revealed when, following a meeting with the foreign ministers of the European Union, Kerry indirectly warned Turkey on July 18 that it might lose its NATO membership if the government continued to act against its political opponents. “NATO membership supposes respect for democratic principles,” he announced. Merkel, who exhibited no scruples in reaching a dirty deal with Erdogan on the return of refugees from war-ravaged countries, threatened an immediate end to EU accession talks if the Turkish government acted upon its threats and reintroduced the death penalty.
The New York Times centered its fire on Erdogan and his government’s post-coup crackdown on coup plotters and supporters who are the political opponents. Barely concealing its surprise and disappointment over the failure of the putsch, it wrote that Erdogan has been no friend to free expression, ruthlessly asserting control over the news media and restricting human rights and free speech. Yet thousands responded to his appeal, turning back the rebels and demonstrating that they love the president and AKP and value freedom and democracy.
Media lords in the USA and EU try to shield the coup plotters the same way they help the Zionist criminals and Hindu criminals in Kashmir. The newspapers conclude by expressing the hope that the next attempt would go better by taking immediate control of the most important state institutions, thereby exposing their hidden agenda for Turkey. Interestingly, German media call President Erdogan new Hitler. Big joke.
In putting down the coup plotters, President Erdogan has saved Islamist government, Turkey nation, its freedom and democracy. But, however, the rebels and suppers and promoters pulling the strings had clearly miscalculated. They had completely underestimated the Turkish public support Erdogan enjoys and could mobilize.
If the coup succeeded and Erdogan were now sitting in prison, like former Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi, who was also elected democratically, they would not be expressing a single democratic scruple. They have raised the question of democracy only now that it suits their political calculations.
Apparently, USA and EU had expected the coup to succeed putting President Erdogan and his AKP leaders in jails. While USA could get rid of turkey form NATO to pursue anti-Islamic agenda openly, EU boss Germany wanted to close the Turkey’s effort to enter the EU as a legitimate European nation The media is playing a particularly cynical role in this campaign, pumping out government propaganda and making no secret of its sympathy for the rebels, while the new anti-Islamic puppet government placed in Ankara, like in Kabul, Libya and even Pakistan, would pursue the goals of USA and NATO and EU as dictated to them by the bosses
The vicious network of plotters, whether sponsored by western powers or not, should be burst as the discontent in other sections of the army and police—responsible for public security outside the large cities—remains. President Erdogan and his government should promptly punish the anti-Islamic plotters and supporters so that future of political and democratic Turkey would be safe and secure.

Islamization of Turkey in the post coup atmosphere!

Islamization of Turkey in the post coup atmosphere!

-Dr. Abdul Ruff

______

Though in Europe, Turkey, unfortunately, is facing the destabilization threats like any other Muslim nation in Asia, especially in Arab world.

Turkish AKP government of Erdogan is fully aware of impediments to Islamist governance being created by the enemies of Islam and opponents of AKP in Turkey. Now that the military coup has been defeated, the government could now resume with more zeal the Islamist mission of ruling AKP for the future of Turkey and the world at large.

For realizing the government goals, Turkey needs to maintain sustained relations with its immediate neighbors. Unfortunately, the military coup occurred as President Erdogan began efforts to formulate a new friendly and productive foreign policy to pursue Turkey’s genuine interests

The defeat of military coup and success of the forces for democracy, both within Turkey and worldwide should strengthen the elected governments to worry more of coups. The Turkey case has shown that entire world has stood up to the military plotters.

The global infrastructure for freedom and democracy makes it harder for would-be strongmen in military or police uniform to succeed in coup plotting in future. .

An attempted coup d’état in Turkey July 15 failed for a host of internal reasons, notably the fumbling nature of the military faction trying to overthrow President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. As President Erdogan tries to use the bungled putsch to further strengthen his rule, he should recognize just how many forces for democracy, both within Turkey and worldwide, saved both elected presidency and his elected AKP government.

In a stroke, some members of Turkey’s military – the second-largest force in NATO and a powerful bastion of secularism that has toppled four civilian governments since 1960 – showed that they were unhappy with Turkey’s Islamist and authoritarian trajectory, and believed they were in a position to stop it.

President Erdogan – the man with a mission for society who for years has fought to eclipse the military’s role in politics in the name of democracy – used Face Time to foil the coup – at the same time exposing the weaknesses of his divisive vision of majoritarian rule. The attempt comes as Turkey faces an unprecedented array of threats, and its stability is critical to a region reeling from the Syrian civil war, the refugee crisis, and the presence of the self-declared Islamic State.

Turkey’s four main political parties issued a statement condemning the military coup, a rare case of national unity. Turkish people, even Erdogan critics, quickly used social media to take to the streets to defend the country’s democracy.

Turkey received universal support for regaining democratic strength. The USA, European Union, and many other democracy backers hailed Turkey’s political success and opposed the coup. Even Russian leader Vladimir Putin spoke up.

Bloody footprints still stained Istanbul’s Taksim Square as thousands of Turks heeded the call by President Erdoğan to celebrate a victory of democracy over an attempted military coup that failed before dawn, just hours after it began. With so much digital information available about the military leaders who opposed the coup, the plotters were easily seen as small in number.

Any person or group trying to thwart a democracy these days is up against a global infrastructure of freedom cum democracy that has been built up since World War II. Many more countries have democratic activists operating in civil society groups. Many governments now have democracy-promotion efforts, such as election support and monitoring. The creation of the International Criminal Court acts as a deterrent to would-be dictators, though some colonialist countries continue to attack neighboring or its own illegal colonies – like Israeli intermittent aggression of Palestine, killing civilians including children and women. .

Before the failed military coup over the weekend and the ensuing purge by President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan of thousands of personnel in the military, police, and judiciary, the country’s political climate had become increasingly authoritarian and toxic. But the military coup could only make the trend firmer.

Obviously, enemies of Islam do not want Muslim children to learn and know Islam. While the AKP government is keen to make school education purposeful for the fullest possible development of Islamic mindset and concern for Islamic values, opponents of Islam play mischief in Turkey’s educational system. The roles of politics and religion in the classroom have been emotive issues in Turkey for decades. The debate has often focused on Imam Hatips: religious schools that are the preferred choice for pious parents who want their children to receive a higher-than-usual dose of Sunni Islamic teaching. In the mid-1990s, around 10 percent of all high school pupils attended Imam Hatips, but that proportion fell dramatically after a crackdown on religious education in 1998.

The Erdogan era has strengthened Islamic system of education as foundation for an Islamist society for glorious life of people. In the past six years, the schools have made a dramatic comeback under the AKP. Several hundred public high schools have been converted into Imam Hatips, and they are now close to surpassing their peak in the 1990s.

However, the latest protests take the debate into new territory, since the schools affected comprise the cream of the education system: the elite high schools that provide free education to the brightest children and have produced a large proportion of its political, intellectual, and cultural leaders.

In March 2015, 44 of these schools were placed under tighter supervision as part of the new Project Schools initiative, which officials say is intended to boost excellence. Istanbul High School is among them. Its famous alumni run the gamut, from academics and poets to pop stars and three former prime ministers.

Turkish government tries to inculcate Islamic values through education. But there have been concerted efforts b anti-Islamic forces operating in Turkey and influencing form across the borders try to complicate the AKP’s educational programs. A section argues, Turkey is a majority Muslim country, but education and religion should be separated from each other for the sake of “secularism”. The organization behind the petition – Mr. Çelik’s Turkish High Schools Union – is linked to a fringe political group that espouses hard-line secular nationalist values.

President Erdoğan has dismissed the protests against Islamization of education and society and a petition in this regard as the work of fringe groups hoping to revive the mass antigovernment protests that shook the country in 2013. “We are seeing that some forces that have still not learned from the past are now provoking university and high school students,” Erdoğan said in a speech on July 16. The government now seems increasingly unwilling to allow children to be educated in an anti-Islamic atmosphere in which they might be exposed to politically oppositional or controversial ideas that could ruin Islam in them , out of fear that this could aalso damage Turkey’s stability and growth. AKP government needs to protect and safeguard the gains of Islamist rule.

The battle for Turkey’s soul – AKP party and President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan – has been revealed in a flash during a coup attempt. The government needs to be firm about the AKP party program and principles to make Turkey truly Islamic state. How Erdogan’s post-coup crackdown impacts the clash over school curriculum and administration remains to be seen.

Democracy has suffered setbacks in the past 15 years. But the number of democracies in the world is at an all-time high and 40 percent of the world’s population still lives under fairly elected governments. More people seek the freedoms of democracy and have more tools to push for it. The world was reminded of this progress in Turkey’s failed coup. That country must now move toward more democracy while ensure mechanisms to deny the military plotters to destroy elected governments. .

A number of coups has fallen over the past quarter century but plotters can continence to attack democracy and cause disorder and destabilization. And would-be strongmen must think twice about offending a range of institutions set up to promote democracy, fight corruption, and defend human rights.

Turkey’s membership in NATO may have reduced the willingness of Turkey’s top brass to join in this latest coup attempt. Turkey seeks to join the EU, which requires it to improve its democratic credentials but coups can harm that effort. The country also needs foreign investment, which means that financial bodies such as the International Monetary Fund look hard at its democratic stability.

The violent bid to oust President Erdoğan has exposed weaknesses in his divisive rule with freedom for subversive politics – and could test Turkey’s stability at a time of unprecedented threats at home and in the region. . Unnecessary compromises with anti-Islamic forces operating within and across the borders could damage the Islamist ideals.

While many argue the event will help Erdoğan consolidate power, he would advance Islamist agenda for turkey. There is huge division in the Turkish military and in Turkish society, and they don’t go away, but they make the person who’s in charge more likely to respond to threats effectively and logically.

New dynamism in Russia-Turkey relations? Some thoughts!

New dynamism in Russia-Turkey relations?
-Dr. Abdul Ruff
______

Until a few days ago there were no hopes that Turkey and Russia would see eye to eye for years as many critics wrote obituary to Russo-Turkish relations thanks to which the NATO got a shot in its terror arms. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan ordered the shooting of Russian plane angering the Kremlin.
Russian President Vladimir Putin issued sanctions against Turkey following the downing of a Russian Su-24 bomber by the Turkish air force on Nov. 24. The document, signed on Nov. 28, envisages restrictions on the import of certain types of products from Turkey. Russia suspended the visa-free travel regime for Turkish citizens, Russian employers will not be allowed to hire Turkish nationals, and charter flights will be banned.

The collapse in relations between Turkey and Russia, as well as between Erdogan and Putin has been dramatic. Not only did Putin branded Erdogan’s forces accomplices of terror after they shot down a Russian military jet due to repeated airspace violations on Russia’s behalf, Erdogan fired insults back. Both leaders accused one another of trading oil with Islamists and Russia introduced trade and travel sanctions on Turkey.

Russo-Turkish relations have always been stained. From the late 16th to the early 20th centuries, relations between the Ottoman and Russian empires were often strained, as the two powers were engaged in a number of Russo-Turkish wars. However, in the 1920s, as a result of the Bolshevik Soviet assistance to Turkish revolutionaries during the Turkish War of Independence, the governments of Moscow and Ankara developed warm relations. In 1932 the Turkish Republic took its first foreign loans from the Soviet Union, and the first 5-year economic and industrial development plan of Turkey (1934–1938) was largely modeled after the 5-year plans of the Soviet Union, which seemed to perform well during the Great Depression; despite setbacks such as the Soviet famine of 1932–33, which was largely hidden from the outside world. The good relations between Moscow and Ankara lasted until Joseph Stalin demanded Soviet bases on the Turkish Straits after the Montreux Convention in 1936, most notably at the Potsdam Conference in 1945. Turkey joined NATO in 1952 and placed itself within the Western alliance against the Warsaw Pact during the Cold War, when relations between the two countries were at their lowest level.
Following the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, relations between Turkey and Russia quickly improved and the two countries eventually started to rank among each other’s largest trade partners. Russia became Turkey’s largest provider of energy, while many Turkish companies began to operate in Russia. In this period, Turkey became the top foreign destination for Russian tourists. However, the warm bilateral relations of the past two decades have been severely strained after the November 2015 jet shoot down incident, when a Turkish F-16 combat aircraft shot down a Russian Su-24 during an airspace dispute close to the Turkish-Syrian border.
Turkish President Erdogan eventually apologized on Nov. 24, 2015 for downing a Russian jet in November and triggered a seven-month-long crisis in bilateral relations. However, majority of Russians do not think their government should hurry to accept Erdogan’s apology. The results of the opinion poll indicate how the negative coverage in the Russian media concerning Turkey, has affected the Russian people.

A process of normalization of relations was launched following the apology: Putin and Erdogan had their first telephone conversation since the November incident, the parties agreed to meet in person in the near future, and restrictions on travel to Turkey for Russian tourists were lifted.
Late in the evening of July 15, a military coup was attempted in Turkey. The attempt to seize power was organized by a group of officers from the country’s military police and air force. According to the latest reports, the death toll in Turkey has climbed to 265 and about 1,440 more were injured as a result of the coup attempt.
The military coup in Turkey is considered by many as a colossal blow has been dealt to the authority and influence of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his Islamist Justice and Development Party. After the failed military coup in Turkey views are divided on the significance of the failure to overthrow the Turkish government by members of the country’s armed forces for Russia-Turkey relations.
It has been 36 years since the last military coup in Turkey, which took place in 1980. Now President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has provoked another putsch, having plunged the country into chaos and undermined its prestige on the international arena.
Why did the military decide to revolt against the Turkish leadership?
There could be many reasons. Turkey has many anti-Islamic elements that want to destabilize Turkey in the hope that USA and Europe would support their cause. Erdogan has in effect provoked a resumption of a civil war in Turkish Kurdistan. In the opinion of many Turkish politicians and Kurds themselves, it was his actions that triggered a flare-up in hostilities and wiped out years of efforts to establish a peace dialogue.

There is a serious ideological conflict between the army, which has been traditionally considered a guarantor of the secular nature of the Turkish state, and the elected Islamist authorities. For a long time it seemed that Erdogan, who is pursuing a policy of Islamization, had the upper hand, after suppressing the resistance of the generals for more powers and, having “purged” the officer corps through a series of large-scale court trials for their anti-Turkey activities. Society is split, as was testified by the mass protests in 2013.

As relations with the EU are ruined, Turkey has practically no chances of joining the EU in the foreseeable future, whereas it is this goal that the country’s leadership has been proclaiming for several decades. The Kurdish issue has caused serious tensions with the United States, while the downed Russian bomber has provoked an unprecedented crisis in relations with Moscow, which only recently was considered to be Turkey’s key partner.
It would appear that all these circumstances have prompted the Turkish president’s opponents into decisive action. Erdogan is pushing for realignment with Russia and Israel. The military plotters may have come to the conclusion that time has come to act. The military coup was untimely as Turkey has already mended ties with Russia and Israel. It was also suggested that the coup had deep-lying causes and reflected the pressing issues of Turkish society.
Russian and Turkish presidents share authoritarianism attitudes. May be, the concentration of all power in the hands of the Turkish president increases the risk of ill-judged decisions, and the Russian authorities will be taking this into account.
While the international community condemned the attempt to seize power in Turkey, Moscow was more restrained in its reaction, with no outright condemnation of the coup bid. Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev urged Ankara to restore the constitutional order as soon as possible. “What happened shows that there are strong and deep divisions inside Turkish society and the armed forces, which were manifested in these events,” he said. Kremlin press secretary Dmitry Peskov expressed concern at the developments in Turkey, saying that Russia was keen to see the events unfolding in Turkey end “in a legitimate way as soon as possible” and hoped that the country would “return to the path of stability, predictability, and law and order.”
The developments in Turkey will not have a negative effect on relations with Moscow.“The attempted coup failed. The plotters have been arrested. Democracy has triumphed. The country’s leadership will start to pursue a more independent policy aimed at strengthening security in the country. The downside will be a drop in the number of Russian tourists and a delay in the lifting of Russia’s economic sanctions

Two flights of Turkish Airlines from Antalya resort town landed in Moscow, according to online data of Moscow’s Vnukovo Airport. A flight from Istanbul airport to Moscow also landed this morning. These are the first flights from Turkey that landed in Moscow after the coup attempt. Russia has currently restricted flights to Turkey. However, Russian and Turkish air carriers may continue performing flights from Turkey, the Russian aviation authority said earlier. Russian flag carrier Airport will start delivering Russians trapped in Istanbul and Antalya today. SU2134 Moscow – Istanbul flight will take passengers in Istanbul and return back to Moscow on July 18, Aeroflot spokesperson told TASS earlier. SU2142 flight will depart from Moscow to Antalya on July 18.
Russia was neutral in Israeli attack on Turkish aidship bound for Gaza strip to breach the Zionist terror blockades, leaving many Turkish and an American dead. Putin refused to condemn the Israeli military attack on sea because of the fact that most of illegal settlers n the illegal colonies inside Palestine are of Russian origin.

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s foreign policy consultant Alexander Dugin visited Ankara after being invited to a meeting held by the nongovernmental organization Eurasian Union of Local Governments a day before the coup. Dugin said that a new era is about to dawn in relations between Russia and Turkey that might even surpass the previous state of ties. At the meeting, which former Justice and Development Party (AKP) deputies and ministers Dugin said he expected fundamental changes for the better. The timing of the recent attack at Istanbul’s Atatürk International Airport was meaningful, as it happened right after Turkey and Russia started to mend their relations. He praised President Erdoğan, saying that “his courageous initiative had a significant role in the normalization.” Dugin affirmed that Erdoğan offering his condolences to the killed Russian pilot’s family minimized Russia’s concerns. “The most important thing was to normalize relations,” Dugin said. “Both Erdoğan and Putin understood this fact while the relations were strained.”

Dugin said he foresees a significant change in the policies of both Russia and Turkey. He said that the USA is advocating the establishment of an independent Kurdish state in the region, which contradicts Russia’s strategies and beliefs. “If Russia and Turkey can reach consensus on Syria, I believe we can also resolve the issues regarding a Kurdish state in the region,” Dugin said. Meanwhile, a Turkish delegation led by Ministry Deputy Secretary Ali Kemal Aydın also held a meeting separately with Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Aleksey Meshkov, talking about the normalization of relations along with gradual revitalization of Turkish-Russian cooperation in economy and trade.

The developments in Turkey will give an impetus to normalizing relations with Moscow. The negative public opinion in Russia surrounding Turkey will gradually become history if relations stay good. Many experts opine the bilateral ties are likely to grow further. The failed coup has the potential to uplift the Russo-Turkish relations to a higher level than ever before.

Putin and Erdogan are reportedly seeking to deepening the ties on all domains.

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Shattered lives

Turkey’s crippled morale

NATO fears

What will Erdogan do next?

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